From the commercial point of view it may be beneficial to install a set of marine current turbines forming a park, by analogy with wind parks. Consequently, this motivates research on park configurations.
An array of ten vertical axis marine current turbines is simulated to study how the distance between the turbines affects the performance of the park for different flow directions. The simulations are performed using a two-dimensional vortex method. An array of identical turbines is created, where all turbines are on a single line. The turbines are operated at the tip speed ratio, which corresponds to the highest power coefficient for a single turbine. The distance between the turbines is varied and the total power from the array is compared to the turbine spacing for different flow directions.
Additionally, flow data from a real site is used to find an optimal orientation of the line of turbines. The performance of the array is estimated for the site as a function of turbine spacing.
